Le luxe est la discipline de la prospérité - André Gide
The house was still far from being ready, but the King
thought he would never get the workmen out unless he moved in himself. As he was adding to it and improving it, he probably never saw it without any scaffolding at all....
He was now finishing the Galerie des Glaces where Le Vau's
first floor terrace had been - the proportions of that facade
sacrificed to the king's need for a vast reception room.
However, what the house lost outside it gained inside, for this gallery is still one of the beauties of the western world.
Seen at night soon after its completion, the painting and the
gilding fresh and new; lit by thousands of candles in silver chandeliers and candelabra, furnished with solid silver consoles and orange tubs; crowded with beauties of both sexes, dressed in satin and lace, embroidered,re-embroidered, over-embroidered with real gold thread, and covered with jewels, it must have been like Aladdin's Cave or some other fable of the Orient.
The Sun King Nancy Mitford
To my friends making home improvements, know you are in good company.
The house was still far from being ready, but the King
thought he would never get the workmen out unless he moved in himself. As he was adding to it and improving it, he probably never saw it without any scaffolding at all....
He was now finishing the Galerie des Glaces where Le Vau's
first floor terrace had been - the proportions of that facade
sacrificed to the king's need for a vast reception room.
However, what the house lost outside it gained inside, for this gallery is still one of the beauties of the western world.
Seen at night soon after its completion, the painting and the
gilding fresh and new; lit by thousands of candles in silver chandeliers and candelabra, furnished with solid silver consoles and orange tubs; crowded with beauties of both sexes, dressed in satin and lace, embroidered,re-embroidered, over-embroidered with real gold thread, and covered with jewels, it must have been like Aladdin's Cave or some other fable of the Orient.
The Sun King Nancy Mitford
To my friends making home improvements, know you are in good company.
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